Much Of This Sordid Look Is
Due To The Smoke Which Issues Out Of All The Windows And Blackens The
House Walls, Inside And Out - The Calabrians Persisting In A Prehistoric
Fashion Of Cooking On The Floor.
The buildings themselves look crude and
gaunt from their lack of plaster and their eyeless windows; black pigs
wallowing at every doorstep contribute to this slovenly ensemble.
The
City Fathers have turned their backs upon civilization; I dare say the
magnitude of the task before them has paralysed their initiative.
Nothing is done in the way of public hygiene, and one sees women washing
linen in water which is nothing more or less than an open drain. There
is no street-lighting whatever; a proposal on the part of a North
Italian firm to draw electric power from the Neto was scornfully
rejected; one single tawdry lamp, which was bought some years ago "as a
sample" in a moment of municipal recklessness, was lighted three times
in as many years, and on the very day when it was least necessary - to
wit, on midsummer eve, which happens to be the festival of their patron
saint (St. John). "It now hangs" - so I wrote some years ago - "at a
dangerous angle, and I doubt whether it will survive till its services
are requisitioned next June." Prophetic utterance! It was blown down
that same winter, and has not yet been replaced. This in a town of
20,000 (?) inhabitants - and in Italy, where the evening life of the
populace plays such an important role. No wonder North Italians, judging
by such external indications, regard all Calabrians as savages.
Some trees have been planted in the piazza since my last stay here; a
newspaper has also been started - it is called "Co-operation: Organ of
the Interests of San Giovanni in Fiore," and its first and possibly
unique number contains a striking article on the public health, as
revealed in the report of two doctors who had been despatched by the
provincial sanitary authorities to take note of local conditions of
hygiene. "The illustrious scientists" (thus it runs) "were horrified at
the filth, mud and garbage which encumbered, and still encumbers, our
streets, sending forth in the warm weather a pestilential odour. . . .
They were likewise amazed at the vigorously expressed protest of our
mayor, who said: 'My people cannot live' without their pigs wallowing
in the streets. San Giovanni in Fiore is exempt from earthquakes and
epidemics because it is under the protection of Saint John the Baptist,
and because its provincial councillor is a saintly man.'" Such
journalistic plain speaking, such lack of sweet reasonableness, cannot
expect to survive in a world governed by compromise, and if the gift of
prophecy has not deserted me, I should say that "Co-operation" has by
this time ended its useful mission upon earth.
This place is unhealthy; its water-supply is not what it should be, and
such commodities as eggs and milk are rather dear, because "the invalids
eat everything" of that kind.
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